Brigham Young University

For many years, Brigham Young University has been a hub for research on the impact of OER and open textbooks. This grant would support the adoption of OER in Virginia community colleges and the launch of a library of open assessments and problem sets to make open textbooks more adoptable. This effort is designed to increase the supply of OER materials in the mainstream and encourage institutions to adopt them.

Brigham Young University researchers propose to expand on a small pilot study indicating that the use of inexpensive open textbooks did not hinder student performance on state test scores. Gathering data from 55,000 high school students, they will investigate if students achieve more when they can use open textbooks as personal, expendable texts to practice advanced study habits such as note taking and highlighting.

This grant would support new research on campaign finance by David Magleby, distinguished professor of political science at Brigham Young University and expert on direct democracy, voting behavior, and campaign finance. The research would focus on donors to the 2012 federal election campaign, building upon Magleby’s study of the 2008 campaign (which created the only data set on small donors from both parties). Many advocates of campaign finance reform call for empowering small donors, but the field currently knows relatively little about small donors’ beliefs and behaviors relative to large donors or the public at large. Professor Magleby’s research will help to illuminate this.